Recently, necessity of reducing of electric power consumption and amount of wastes wholly caused by image forming apparatus is raised for corresponding to energy and resource saving.
In the image forming apparatus, the amount of electric power consumed by the fixing device is large and reducing such the electric power is effective as the energy saving means. As the resources saving means, it is effective to reduce the amount of scrapped photoreceptor by prolonging the using period by the lifetime of the photoreceptor.
At the present time, the use of low temperature fixing toner for reducing the electric power consumed by the fixing device and the prolongation of the lifetime of the photoreceptor for reducing the amount of scrapping materials are demanded.
Investigation for lowering the glass transition temperature of the toner is carried out to obtain the toner effective for reducing the electric consumption by lowering the setting temperature in the fixing device; cf. Patent Publication 1 for example.
Moreover, it is investigated to prolong the lifetime of the photoreceptor by improving the cleaning suitability by lowering the friction coefficient with the cleaning blade by coating a lubricant on the surface of the photoreceptor for realizing the prolongation of the lifetime of the photoreceptor; cf. Patent Publication 2 for example.
However, a problem of internal lacking of image, hereinafter referred to as internal image lacking, is caused at the characters and dots portion of the printed image when an image printed by applying a toner having a glass transition point of from 20 to 45° C. to an image forming apparatus having a transfer roller.
Patent Publication 3 discloses an image forming apparatus comprising a cleaning blade and a lubricant applying element so that the cleaning area and the lubricant applying area overlap.
Furthermore, digital technology is recently introduced in the technical field of image formation by the electrophotographic system such as copiers and printers for raising the image quality; therefore, it is required to exactly reproduce the image of lines and dots equally in a convenient printing system.    Patent Publication 1: JP A 2001-175025    Patent Publication 2: JP A 2005-352009    Patent Publication 3: WO 2006/062229 A1